work.

You have heard, and perhaps some of you are thinking--I hope
not--that women should be at home. I wish to say to you that there
are millions of women in the United States who have no homes.
There are millions of women who are trying to earn their bread and
hold their purity sacred. For that class of women I appeal to you.
In the city of Albany there are hundreds of women in our factories
making the shirts that you can buy for $1.50 and $2, and all those
women are paid for making the shirts is 4 cents apiece. There are
in the State of New York 18,000 teachers. When I was a teacher
and taught with gentlemen in our academies, I received about
one-fourth of the pay because I happened to be a woman. I consider
it an insult that forever burns in my soul, that I am to be handed
a mere pittance in comparison with what man receives for same
quality of work. When I was sent out by our superintendent of
public instruction to hold conventions of teachers, as I have
often done in our State of New York, and when I did one-third more
work than the men teachers so sent out, but because I was a woman
and had not the ballot, I was only paid about half as much as
the man; and saying that once to our superintendent of public
instruction in Albany, he said, "Mrs. Howell, just as soon as you
get the ballot and have a political influence in the work you will
have the same pay as a man."

We ask for the ballot for that great army of fallen women who walk
our streets and who break up our homes and ruin our husbands and
our dear boys. We ask it for those women. The ballot will lift
them up. Hundreds and thousands of women give up their purity for
the sake of starving children and families. There is many a woman